County: Roscommon Site name: Site 5, Cloonagownagh
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 03E1771
Author: Judith Carroll, 13 Anglesea Street, Dublin 2.
Site type: Burnt mound
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 587491m, N 764213m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.627586, -8.189092
Excavation was carried out in November/December 2003, when the site was uncovered during monitoring of soil-stripping ahead of construction of the N4 road realignment scheme, 3km west of Carrick-on-Shannon to 8km east of Boyle.
The site was a burnt mound (fulacht fiadh) covering an area of c. 8m north-south by (greater than) 5m, with the spread extending into the area outside the road-take. The site is located on a south-facing slope some 50m to the south-east of a major multi-phase earthwork enclosure.
The surface was cleaned by hand, resulting in the uncovering of a single irregular spread of dark material some 6.4m by 4m in extent. Well-preserved faunal remains were recovered from the burnt spread, and from two underlying laminated palaeosols. A single flake of struck flint/chert was recovered from the basal palaeosol. Sterile boulder clay underlies this buried soil.
